


Every Man I Fall For

by mightbeanasshole



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Domestic, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, M/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-03
Updated: 2015-02-03
Packaged: 2018-03-10 09:49:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3285878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightbeanasshole/pseuds/mightbeanasshole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Geoff works the night shift and Michael struggles through his classes, Michael can't put his finger on why this summer in their small town makes him feel fixed and exposed like a bug in amber.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Man I Fall For

**Author's Note:**

> As heavily inspired by the song "Every Man I Fall For" by Cold War Kids, which you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b3BkXvY0EY

**Summer, 2011**

Michael doesn’t dwell on the memory of the only life he’d been able to save but had not.

He still has nightmares about it, though.

Half a crushed oxy on the coffee table and the residue of a lot more, a drooping bromeliad in the corner of the living room, thumbing up her eyelids mapped with veins, the pin-prick pupils.

In the dreams, his own voice joins the cacophony of a too-loud tv playing a show about real estate on an island somewhere, and in a foreign-sounding voice Michael is begging--“She needs fucking Narcan”--and the response is just a grim look from the other EMT.

If he had been a paramedic and not a glorified fucking taxi driver, he’d have been allowed to administer it.

And if he’d have had a set of balls, a sense of purpose, he thinks, he’d have done it anyway and the stranger would still have a life to ruin along with him in Homerville, Georgia.

\---

Michael’s having the dream for the eighteenth or nineteenth time when Geoff knocks a glass tumbler to the floor at 6:43 in the morning.

When Michael drags himself out to the kitchen, the other man is hunched and pushing shards of colorless glass into a dustpan with his hand. He looks over his shoulder sheepishly, his eyebrows knit together.

“Shit,” he says quietly, as if still trying to let Michael sleep. “Knew that’d wake you.”

“Bad dream anyway,” Michael says. “Here, I’ll get you the broom.”

“Nah, fuck it,” Geoff says. “I got it all up like this.” He stands and dips the dustpan into the trash, and the glass pieces make the smallest sound as they fall for the second time that morning.

Michael pulls a chair out from the small folding card table in the kitchen and its rubber feet scrape against the old linoleum.

“You want some breakfast?” Geoff asks. He brushes his hands, calloused and tattooed, slowly down the front of his uniform shirt. It’s still tucked in, buttoned up, and his voice sounds high and clear.

He’s not been drinking, then. Michael wonders why he’s getting home an hour late, if not for drinking.

“Yeah,” Michael says from his place at the table. “Sure.”

Michael’s not hungry--can barely stomach breakfast this early--but if Geoff cooks, it means he won’t go straight to bed. So he’ll eat.

\---

Geoff makes eggs and toast for Michael, a cheap cut of steak for himself, and they sit down to the first home-cooked meal they’ve had together in 11 days.

“How was your night?” Michael asks, genuinely wanting to know but already able to recite the noncommittal answer he’ll get from Geoff. What he really wants to know is what Geoff did instead of drinking with Jack, but he knows he won’t get an explanation, that asking outright will only earn him a joking accusation of paranoia.

“Same old shit,” Geoff says. “Second week of constant fucking arc blow and my lead welder wants to tell me to use a shorter arc. Never the machine, right? Like I have no fucking clue what I’m doing.”

“So they didn’t do anything even after you reported it?”

“You know how it goes--they want the weld looking like a stack of dimes and they want it done yesterday,” Geoff says. “Doesn’t matter if the machine is fucking up or not.”

Geoff has cracked his second beer by the time he’s eating and he seems about as interested in his steak as Michael is in his eggs. There’s a stack of mail on the table and Geoff starts to go through it. He settles on a colorful mailer from Michael’s paramedic program at Wiregrass.

“Is the new gear grinder fitting in better?” Michael asks, forcing a bite of scrambled eggs.

“Who, Ryan?” Geoff says, not looking up from the piece of mail. “Yeah, he’s doing OK I guess. Still following me and Jack around like a lost puppy, finding some excuse to come over and bother me every thirty seconds.”

Geoff maneuvers a slice of steak into his mouth without looking up.

“He’s the only guy on Overnight 3 who doesn’t drink,” Geoff says. “Gotta wonder what that must be like.”

There’s a long pause as Geoff continues to flip through the publication. “ _WIREGRASS GEORGIA TECHNICAL COLLEGE: NO PLACE LIKE THIS, NO ONE LIKE YOU_ ,” the full-color cover declares over a picture of two smiling paramedics.

“Do we have anything we hafta do on Saturday?” Geoff asks after a moment. “He invited everybody over for a cookout that afternoon.”

“The gear guy did?”

“Yeah. He’s got a pretty piece of land over off Cogdale,” Geoff says.

“No,” Michael says. “We can go if you want.”

It’s starting to piss him off that he’s got a minute of Geoff’s time--awake and sober--and the man has his nose buried in some stupid piece of propaganda from his community college.

“What’s in that thing, anyway?” Michael asks, when Geoff doesn’t continue the conversation.

“Listen to this: ‘In general, paramedics and emergency service workers have the following personality traits,’” Geoff says, reading. “‘They like to be in control… They are risk takers… They tend to enjoy public attention... ‘ This whole list is you to a T.”

“Wow, thanks,” Michael says, rolling his eyes. “Are there no positive traits on that list?”

Geoff finally looks up, an ironic frown on his face.

“You didn’t even let me finish,” he says. “‘They are dedicated and loyal… They have a strong desire to be needed and want to help others.”

“They have a strong desire to make enough money to move out of their shitty duplex,” Michael says. “They want to work a nightshift so they can actually see their boyfriends.”

Geoff puffs a laugh through his nose and sets down the piece of mail.

“Those aren’t in there,” he says. “But I’m sure they were close runners up.”

\---

Caiti and Jack corner Michael on Saturday, quizzing him about paramedic school.

Yes, he was exhausted. Yes, it was hard. No, he wasn’t doing so great.

“Well, Geoff’s really proud of you, Michael,” Jack says, clamping a big hand down on his shoulder. Michael hates it, feels like a kid--and he tries not to frown.

“Thanks for saying so,” Michael says, not sure how else to respond.

Jack takes it as his cue to leave and he heads off towards the opposite end of the back yard where Geoff and Ryan are standing hip-to-hip at a grill. Caiti and Michael both watch him go for a moment before Caiti takes Michael by the elbow and guides them to a bench next to a raised garden.

“How are you doing, really?” Caiti asks, dropping her voice.

Christ, what had he done to deserve this line of questioning?

“I’m good, seriously,” Michael says, probably a little too loud. “Class is just... It sucks--it’s hard.”

“It’ll be worthwhile though, right?”

She’s giving him an affectionate glance over the top of her glasses and if he wasn’t feeling strange at the beginning of this conversation, he certainly feels it now.

“Yeah, of course,” Michael says. “The money’s better and there’s not as much red tape, you know?”

“I wish I could do that kind of work,” Caiti says. “I don’t think I could handle it though.”

A peal of laughter, distinctly Geoff’s, rings out over the expansive back yard.

“Anyway, do you want a beer?” Michael says, ready to escape.

\-----

**Spring, 2008**

Ray’s heart falls when Michael’s number flashes on his cell phone on a warm afternoon in April.

It’s not because he doesn’t want to talk to his friend, of course.

But in the four years since they graduated high school together, he’d never received a call from Michael that meant good news--even if it took months for Ray to realize that.

The first call had come from his friend a month after Ray moved into his dorm at Albany State. Michael had met a guy, Pete, in EMT training--really handsome, super ambitious, they were gonna move in together soon--had a spot picked out in Leesburg and wasn’t that great, that he’d be right in Ray’s back yard?

It was the first piece of bad news. Though neither of them knew it.

But six weeks later when his friend had called again late on a Friday night, his voice had sounded all sorts of wrong. Like it was three sizes too small for the person Ray knew Michael to be.

“Ray, hey,” he’d said. “Look I really hate to bother you.”

“Are you OK?”

“Yeah, definitely,” Michael had lied. “Look, I’m stranded at this bar and if you’re not busy, I was wondering if you could give me a ride?”

“Of course,” Ray had said. “What’s the address?”

When he’d arrived at the place, some dive off of 19, Ray had expected Michael to be drunk--had thought that he just needed a sober driver to get him home. But he wasn’t.

Ray didn’t demand an explanation and Michael didn’t offer one.

There was no small talk as Michael helped Ray navigate to an apartment fifteen minutes away in Leesburg, and Ray was shocked to see Michael’s hatchback parked out front.

“You’re a life-saver, man,” Michael had said, leaning over to hug his friend before getting out of the car. He had ducked back into the car window then, promised Ray that they would hang out soon--that he wanted to hear all about school and what his roommate was like and all of that shit.

A light had come on in a first-floor apartment while Michael was talking, and a man had stepped through the door. Ray couldn’t see much in the light and the man didn’t come any closer. He looked old--twice as old as Michael--and tall, and hard. Michael approached the guy, his posture strange.

The man didn’t say a thing, and Michael walked through the door.

\---

They weren’t the greatest at keeping in touch, and Ray admittedly had a lot on his mind with the first semester of school underway. The next time he saw Michael was when they were both home for Thanksgiving in Waycross. Lindsay was having everyone halfway decent from their class over for a potluck.

Michael crashed into him with a hug and a drink in his hand, talking so loud and fast and happily that it took ten minutes before Ray noticed the ghost of a black eye in the dim light.

\---

It went on like that.

He’d get the call from Michael, his friend needing somewhere to stay for a night, or a ride home. Ray would show up and Michael would have a weak story about a miscommunication or an emergency.

Pete turned into John. John turned into Curt.

So when Michael’s number flashes on his cell phone in April, when Michael clambers to tell Ray about Geoff, when Michael insists that he’s really handsome, super ambitious, they were gonna move in together soon--had a spot picked out, and he’s only 12 years older than Michael, which isn’t so bad--Ray’s heart drops.

\---

But as spring turns into summer, the phone calls come with more frequency--and it’s not always bad news anymore.

In June, Michael gets a new job near Colquitt Regional, to be closer to where Geoff works, and he seems to like it.

In August, Geoff gets laid off--but Michael is hopeful. There’s always work for welders and medical staff, right?

And he is right, although it means Michael quitting his job as an ambulance driver when they move to Homerville in December for Geoff’s new gig.

\---

**Winter, 2008**

Ray visits at Christmas and sleeps on the couch in their duplex. It’s not so bad. Geoff’s not so bad.

Michael looks happy. He’s put on weight, new tattoos. The three of them watch reruns of It’s Always Sunny when Geoff gets off his shift, Michael and his boyfriend tucking into twin cocktails.

It takes a moment for Ray to get past his first impression of Geoff because, by all accounts, he is yet again every inch of every man that Michael falls for. Older. Tall and hard with mean-looking tattoos. But there are pieces of him that don’t fit the mold: the infectious laugh of a person half-unhinged with joy, the way his heavy-lidded eyes sweep towards Michael every time his mouth opens.

Geoff cooks them all dinner on Sunday and it’s damned good--pork chops and roasted asparagus and something they call risotto which appears to just be rice in sauce, although Ray doesn’t point that out. It’s warm and homey around the card table they’ve got set up in the kitchen, Geoff laughing at every joke that Ray makes and squeezing Michael’s knee.

It takes the entire weekend for Ray’s suspicion to subside, but by the time they’re waving goodbye to him from the porch, Ray even finds himself a little jealous of Michael.

And happy for it.  

\---

Michael will remember 2009 as a good year, the time when he’s been happiest.

He starts working for an ambulance service in February, and it’s a good fit. Long hours, as much overtime as he wants, and he matches pace with Geoff. Winter eases off gradually and then all at once, and Georgia is green and gently rolling in the background.

2009 is a year that goes by in soft focus. It’s punctuated by lakeside afternoons and beers under fireworks instead of embarrassed calls to his best friend, instead of nights up ‘till sunrise fighting about something neither of them can remember by the time it’s over.

When Geoff gets mad, he doesn’t leave and he doesn’t rage--and he doesn’t lay a hand on Michael. The thought of that, Geoff says when Michael brings it up, makes him want to vomit. When Geoff gets mad, he sits and drinks and works it out, and though it hurts when it happens--though Michael does everything he can to make the man happy and to never be the cause of any grief--when it does happen, it’s over eventually with no marks, no fist-sized holes in the drywall of the tiny duplex.

And gradually Michael unlearns his bad habits. He’s not so impulsive with money, not so quick to anger. Michael only throws a lamp against a wall the one time, and when he starts shaking immediately out of a fear that he can’t put into words, any anger Geoff may have felt initially melts out of him, and he gathers Michael up off the floor where he’s collecting the pieces of broken ceramic and lightbulb and presses kisses into him until Michael stops apologizing.

Before Christmas, Geoff comes home with Michael’s name tattooed across the top of his back and Michael immediately teases him about it.

“Why not a tramp stamp, Geoff?”

But as brash and ridiculous as the gesture is, Michael realizes that the tattoo is probably a fitting tribute to the brash and ridiculous person that _he_ is. It’s the best Christmas present he’s ever been given and Geoff knows it, too.

\---  
They both watch the trajectory change in 2010.

It starts in March, with the girl in the suburbs, the oxycodone.

They drill it into you in training: don’t exceed the scope of your practice.

But Michael’s no idiot, he’s been running emergencies long enough to recognize an OD, and around enough paramedics to know what to do for it.

But they drill it into you. You exceed the scope of your practice and you’re fired, you’re gone, you’re barred, and you’re done for. And instead of doing the right thing that day, Michael thinks about his little life with Geoff. He thinks about blue eyes and car payments.

And afterwards, there’s a month where they don’t talk about it, not that Geoff doesn’t try.

“I won’t pretend to know what it feels like,” Geoff says, insisting he’s just a grunt who sticks metal to metal, that he’ll leave the cerebral shit to Michael, but that he’s there if Michael wants to talk about it.

But, shit, what’s there to say? How many people had Michael watched die in his six years as an EMT? How many people, young and old, had he failed to save because he wasn’t fast enough or because they were beyond saving?

It’s not until May that Michael settles on the truth being, in the end, that he’d killed that girl.

When he breaks the second lamp, Geoff isn’t home to stop him picking up the pieces and quietly taking them in a trashcan out to the corner. And Geoff isn’t in his head to watch the dream that plays out there, either.

\---

**Summer, 2010**

In June, Geoff and Jack get an ultimatum at work: switch to the night shift or take a hike. It’s not their fault--all the welders and machine guys are going nights. Something about streamlining or logistics or bottom lines--they’re just expected to infer it, Jack guesses, because nobody making five figures is even given the benefit of the doubt that they’d be able to understand the motivation behind a decision like that.

The guys have a blow-out bash that year for Independence Day. It’s a sort of going away party. Half of them have decided to leave right off, the other half giving the night shift a chance. It gets hosted at some big piece of waterfront property and the night is perfect and humid and it becomes too easy for Jack to ignore the fact that half of his friends are skipping town soon while they watch fireworks explode too close to the ground.

Jack and Caiti somehow end up babysitting Michael after the fireworks because he’s had too much to drink and is suddenly weepy and hemorrhaging worries about the prospect of his boyfriend working overnight every goddamn night for the foreseeable future.

And Jack throws an arm across his narrow shoulders, knowing that he must stink like sweat and not caring, and he insists to Michael, promises to him that it won’t be so bad while Caiti retrieves a tepid hamburger from somewhere to try and soak up the alcohol in Michael’s system. She pushes the paper plate into Michael’s hands before sending Jack off to go look for Geoff.

Jack finds him on the end of the dock, passing a flask to Gus as they dangle their legs over the edge in the moonlight.

“What a fuckin’ night, Jack,” Geoff says. “Did you see the fireflies?”

“Nope,” Jack says.

“All up by the grass up there,” Gus says, gesturing behind them with the flask. “Go look at those blinking fuckers.”  

“Why don’t we all head back up?” Jack suggests, reaching a hand down to help Geoff up. He starts to herd them back up the dock, wanting to shoo Geoff off to his boyfriend without outright saying it in front of Gus.

“Fuck man,” Geoff says, letting Jack heave him up to his feet. “At least _you’re_ not leaving.”

“Christ, it’s not like I’m dying,” Gus says, getting up easier, not even half as drunk. “But if I start working night, Esther’ll murder me.”

“You’re too good looking to die, man,” Geoff says, slinging an arm across Gus’ shoulders. “I get it.”

\---

After they’ve dropped the two men safely off at their duplex, Caiti’s hand finds Jack’s in the car.

“Do you really think it won’t be so bad, Jack?”

“I think it’s gonna be hell,” he admits.

\---

For the first month, Geoff working the night shift isn’t as bad as Michael had expected. They spend a decent amount of time together on the weekends, and Geoff is there every morning--waking Michael up with a gentle kiss and then taking his place in bed.

But by September, Geoff is beginning to feel like a stranger.

Michael loses track of the names of the new people at work, the men who come to replace Gus and Burnie and Joel and everyone else who left after the switch. And every day at work, Michael chafes more at the restrictions that keep him from actually helping people--at never being able to dole out the needed drug, to start an IV when the equipment’s right there and the paramedic on duty is occupied elsewhere.

By October, Geoff’s drinking vodka now instead of whiskey and when the clear spirit starts showing up on the kitchen counter, Michael wonders where he picked that habit up.

And when they were on the same schedule, the drinking never bothered Michael--if Geoff was buzzed, Michael was buzzed--but there’s something dizzying about the man he loves coming home from work at 7 a.m. smelling like booze and with the type of talkative energy that he’d only ever known alcohol to impart on the man.

Michael stops drinking entirely because it feels too bizarre to drink by himself when Geoff’s not home, and he’s too concerned with making good use of the time he gets with Geoff to pick it back up when he _is_ home.

\---

In November, Geoff and Michael both get four days off in a row from work and their sleeping schedules meet somewhere in the middle by Saturday. They wake up in bed together at 10 in the morning, sunlight streaming into the room because nobody bothered to close the blinds before they crashed down to sleep.

Michael isn’t sure which one of them wakes up first, but they’re both suddenly _there_ \--both awake and seeing each other as if for the first time since July--and their bodies collide with a desperation that leaves them both sweating and bruised and out of breath.

They stay in bed afterwards, disoriented by a change in schedule, the angles of the light outside all wrong, and Geoff presses his forehead against Michael’s and asks him if he’s ever thought of going back to school.

“For what?”

“You could be a paramedic--or a nurse,” Geoff says. “You’re smart enough for it.”

“There’s not even any place to go to school here, Geoff.”

“Bullshit there’s not. Wiregrass has a program. You could work nights, too--or hell, we could move away, move wherever you want, and I’ll get a real day job again.”

And it becomes clear that Geoff’s looked it up, that he’s been thinking about it for a while, that he’s even crunched the numbers and figured out that they can afford for Michael to go back to school if he takes out a little student loan and Geoff pays all the bills.

Michael says he’ll think about it, asks for time to decide, says he wouldn’t want to start until the fall anyway.

\---

Saturday night, he has the dream again.

On Monday he, begs off work to track down all of the paperwork, to go to Wiregrass--and he applies for admission.

\---

**Summer, 2011**

Michael’s up early on the Monday after Ryan’s shindig. He’s got a three-hour class starting at 10, and before that he needs to drop off a pair of Geoff’s work boots to be repaired. Chores just seem to default to him, since Geoff’s footing the bill for everything, and as much as Michael would like to bring it up, as much as he’s starting to resent it, it’s not a good enough reason to create discord.

He expects Geoff to be in bed when he wakes up, but when he turns, there’s just a pile of clean laundry he forgot to fold the night before in Geoff’s spot. Michael can hear the TV playing faintly in the living room. There’s still time to sit and wake up alone, and he paws his phone from its place on the nightstand and flicks it open.

Ray’s posted a picture on Facebook overnight, some mile-high sandwich from the night before. He’s living in Atlanta now, new girlfriend--predictably beautiful--new job--predictably cosmopolitan. Michael taps to comment on the picture, starts to type in a joke and then realizes that he’s not sure if Ray will understand that he’s being sarcastic and not bitter. He deletes it, shuts down the app.

He pops his neck and his jaw and heaves himself out of bed.

Geoff’s sleeping open-mouthed on the couch, his feet kicked up at an odd angle, a cushion clutched to his bare chest. All the ice has melted in the drink at his feet.

“Hey,” Michael says gently, stooping down and stroking a hand through his hair.

Geoff wakes up with a jolt, doesn’t smile.

“You want something to eat?”

“Nah,” Geoff says--and it’s clearly difficult to keep his eyes open. He’s sleep-dazed and Michael wonders how long he’s been napping on the couch instead of coming to bed. Michael watches as he stiffly props himself up, breathes out a sigh, and exits toward the bedroom.

\---

There’s no parking in the central business district by the time Michael arrives for his errand, and he ends up parking his car a few blocks from the shoe shop in an area where commercial mixes with residential. As he approaches a prairie style home, he can hear a couple arguing. A door slams open and a man walks out onto the concrete slab leading to the sidewalk.

“I don’t have time for this shit,” he says loudly over his shoulder, not shutting the door behind him. He’s dressed in a dark uniform, a big key chain at his hip, and a woman comes out onto the porch after him. They look like they’re in their forties.

“If I can’t find it, I’m gonna have to buy another one,” the woman says, meeting the man’s anger with equal force.

“Then buy another one, what do I give a fuck?” and he’s walking away, leaving her barefoot there.

Michael slows his pace, doesn’t want the guy to crash into him on the sidewalk as he heads to his car.

“Waste more money on the complete fucking disarray, right?” he says, not even turning to make sure she hears anymore, so angry he doesn’t even notice Michael.

He circles around to the driver’s side of the car. Michael tries to be as inconspicuous as possible, embarrassed for the woman on the porch, feeling like he’s intruding just by walking down the street.

The man slams his door and the car roars to life before speeding off. The woman retreats inside, crashing the front door shut.

The world goes from loud dissonance to silence.

With Geoff’s boots tucked under his arm, Michael continues down the street.

 

 


End file.
